Tata Broadband: Deep Packet Inspection

[gregory house]

I have been using a Tata Indicom ADSL connection (256kbps Unlimited - provided by Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Limited) since July. I used to get constant speeds of 25KB-27KB (6PM - 11AM) and 10K-20K (11AM - 6PM) till about 4 days back.

From Monday, I started getting 25KB-27KB speeds ONLY BETWEEN 1AM-10AM. At all other times the speeds fluctuate badly between 3KB-10KB. To see if there was a problem with my line, I tried downloading test files from TTML servers at Turbhe, Maharashtra (http://speedtest.ttml.co.in). Not surprisingly, I got 25KB-27KB speeds.

Another strange thing I noticed was that only compressed files (zip, rar, chm) and video files suffered from slow speeds. I could download MSDN code exes from http://msdn2.microsoft.com at good speeds. But chm files (compressed html) from the same site were being downloaded at 10K speeds.

I suspected bandwidth throttling by TTML. So I googled for information on the same. It was then that I came upon the following articles:
1. Deep Packet Inspection
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/Deep-packet-inspection-meets-net-neutrality.ars

2. The End of the Internet?
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/chester

3. House Panel shoots down Net Neutrality
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060515/chester

Till now I always thought that you could either throttle bandwidth as a whole (providing say 60% of promised connection during peak hours thereby reserving bandwidth for profitable customers - corporates and business users) or block certain ports or domains/ urls. The above articles surprised me a lot.

We in India have always been consumers of technology and restrictions developed elsewhere (note that Bollywood figures nowhere on discussions on nextgen DVDs although its revenues for the next decade are related to the issue).

If TTML/ Tata Indicom is indeed implementing Deep Packet Inspection, other ISPs are bound to follow and that would sound the death knell for the public in a country where people are already information-starved.

Anybody has any information on whether TTML or other ISPs are doing so or is my experience is flawed/ unique in some manner?

 

[Karan]

Well you should have done some "deep inspection" of the Tata section of this forum, i.e the section you have posted this topic in, you will note that the ISP in general has a rather poor track record in regard to speeds and consistency. Deep Packet is implemented only by a few ISPs in North America, Rogers Cable in Canada being the most famous/known one use it and cause a stir, they too only throttle the Bit-Torrent protocol as a whole, doing such selective throttling as you have suggested would be in my opinion "overkill" and more so would require excessive resources to implement so effectively. It is just the fact as i have already stated, your ISP is inconsistent, period.

 

[gregory house]

I had been trying to get a broadband/ high speed internet connection for the past year. I had contacted Hathway (providing internet through my erstwhile cable operator), Reliance Broadband (via cable) and Tata Indicom (via cable). ISP One did not find it necessary to reply to my inquiry; ISPs Two and Three could not get the cable into my housing society.

I am not sure if I can trust BSNL or get a working connection from them. When I disconnected my BSNL telephones 4 years ago, they had an archaic exchange in my area and I would get 1.5KB-2KB download speeds via dialup.

TTML is the only provider in my area and I had read on various forums that their DSL broadband did not suffer from the problems plaguing Tata Indicom. So, this was the only option available to me.

I will use it for some more time to see if things improve. Otherwise I always have my Reliance dialup which provided decent and constant speeds.

I started this thread to find if anybody has experienced variable speeds for various tasks - browsing, downloads etc. My question still stands.

For those who are interested, I forgot to post information on the company that makes DPI possible for most ISPs. It is Allot Communications and it makes a product called NetEnforcer (http://www.allot.com/html/products_netenforcer.shtm).

The following is a link to a whitepaper on DPI by Allot Communications. The link is available on page 2 of article 1. If someone missed the same, you can get the pdf file here (size: 130KB, pages: 12): http://www.getadvanced.net/learning/whitepapers/networkmanagement/Deep%20Packet%20Inspection_White_Paper.pdf

 

[gregory house]

Last night, my TTML ADSL broadband went kaput. An ugly end to an already bad week. I immediately asked them to disconnect my line. The fellow asked me a reason for disconnection. I gave them one - unsatisfactory service.Today morning, since I am still paying INR 33 a day till they disconnect the line, I called up to complain about the non-working connection and got the standard 12 working hours reply. It seems that other than France (with its pre-Sarkozy 35-hour week), Indian PSUs and PSBs and Indian telecom companies, the whole world works seven days a week.I might go in for Reliance ADSL broadband if I can contact them. I have some information and questions which I will be posting in the Reliance Broadband forum.